


i will love you

by nocturneatmidnight



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Social Media, izumi and love, leo loves izumi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29897673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturneatmidnight/pseuds/nocturneatmidnight
Summary: He was someone difficult to love, as he very well knew. And by extension, surely he would find it difficult to love others- or rather, to show his love for other people. Growing up in a household where nogoodwasgood enough,where the only forms of affection were deemed ‘tough love’ and came in the forms of generous nags and hour-long lectures, Sena Izumi loathed to admit that showing love in ways that weren’t roundabout and indirect was a far more daunting task than performing a live in front of thousands of people. Singing, he could do. Dancing, he could do. Openly loving? That was a whole other ball game.Still. He’d thought he’d gotten used to it.The abrupt destruction of that thought started, as many things in the entertainment world did, with a single post on Twitter.
Relationships: Sena Izumi/Tsukinaga Leo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	i will love you

**Author's Note:**

> euthanasia event story kicked my ass and there is quite a bit of stuff regarding love in there (i wrote this while reading the more izumi-centric parts so this piece leans towards him) so uhhhhhhhhhhh yeah whatever this is. happened. here u go

To be loved was something strange.

It was whispered answers to teachers’ questions when called upon during classes, it was shrimp being put aside for him in others’ bentos because they knew he was partial to it. It was arms over shoulders during sports and festivals, and being dragged haphazardly beneath kotatsus instead of participating in practice. It came in the form of _Secchan_ and _Sena-senpai_ and a thousand other nicknames that once made his skin crawl but now felt like gentle embraces, it came in the form of songs being doodled over walls in his honour, hummed and sang for his opinion while still in the works- before its composer was driven out of the empty, now-vandalised classroom (Izumi following close behind) by a raging, bespectacled student council member.

To be loved was something that was, on the whole, supremely bizarre and foreign to Sena Izumi. Yet he’d thought he’d gotten used to it, if only just a little- gotten used to accepting such (apparently) trivial gestures of love, and even gotten used to returning some of that love himself. It wasn’t much, and he couldn’t change himself _completely_ \- at least not now, in such short amounts of time- but he could still try to be different, bit by bit. It was the little things that mattered, he’d been told- things like letting smiles curve at his lips more often, or holding his tongue from making brash remarks and giving occasional praise instead. Things like allowing himself to be dragged into hot, suffocating hugs, or taking pats on the back from those he was barely familiar with in stride.

He nagged and scolded, rolled his eyes and shook his head, but he also showed- hopefully- that he did it all out of love. Out of love for his cocky junior whom he’d known and cared for since the beginning of their modelling days, who wasn’t going to get anywhere if she didn’t stop being such a people-pleaser- out of love for the scarlet-eyed sleepyhead who would go places if he just woke up and _bucked up_ once in a while. Out of love for their precious, thickheaded brat who needed to stop being too ridiculously idealistic for his own good, out of love for their equally precious and thickheaded king who needed help keeping his feet tethered to the ground, so he didn’t float off into a distant universe to compose songs in the company of who knew what.

Izumi loved them all, loved them so much he sometimes felt like all the love they gave back was some sort of farce, a well-played hallucination clouding every inch of his mind. Because there was no way all these people, these kind and gentle and passionate and _brilliant_ souls, could love someone like Sena Izumi. Someone who was stony and off-putting, someone who edged away from joyful crowds rather than diving straight in. Someone with a sharp, cruel tongue and a cold disposition, someone harsh and cutting and wholly overbearing.

He was someone difficult to love, as he very well knew. And by extension, surely he would find it difficult to love others- or rather, to show his love for other people. Growing up in a household where no _good_ was _good enough,_ where the only forms of affection were deemed ‘tough love’ and came in the forms of generous nags and hour-long lectures, Sena Izumi loathed to admit that showing love in ways that weren’t roundabout and indirect was a far more daunting task than performing a live in front of thousands of people. Singing, he could do. Dancing, he could do. Openly loving? That was a whole other ball game.

Still. He’d thought he’d gotten used to it.

The abrupt destruction of that thought started, as many things in the entertainment world did, with a single post on Twitter.

Fans, by rule, were never allowed backstage after lives. Despite that iron-clad rule and Knights’ now-questionable security team, however, it seemed that someone had snuck themselves behind the curtains anyway. Not even an hour after the live had ended, a video had been posted on someone’s social media account- a video of Knights’ Sena Izumi, tastelessly nagging at one of his unit members.

Leo had slipped up that night, just enough for it to be noticeable by the audience- and while the majority of said audience was likely too entranced in Knights’ performance as a whole to catch the mistake, there was still a chance that a lone person, a one-percent out of the hundred, had managed to do so. That was something potentially disastrous for one of the Big Three of their industry, for one of _Knights._ Of course, Izumi couldn’t let that go unchecked- so he brought it up after they’d made it backstage, after the lights had dimmed and the audience was _supposed_ to be filing out of the performance hall. That, he suspected, was when a well-hidden, overexcited fan had flipped out their smartphone and tapped record.

The video posted was a short one- just a brief clip, barely a minute in duration. All that was shown was Izumi chewing Leo out in his usual manner as they took swigs of water and wiped sweat off their faces, Leo simply humming and nodding all the way. The latter was used to Izumi’s lectures, after all- knew how to pick out the advice and observation, the underlying words and the thinly veiled praise. This, Izumi was grateful for, whether it came from Leo or any other member of Knights- they knew him for all of his dishonesty and disguise, and saw through him, _loved_ him anyway. (Sometimes irritatingly so.) They knew that the things he said were meant to help rather than hurt, to push his loved ones higher and higher, as close to the summit as they could possibly go.

Knights knew that. The same couldn’t be said for their audience, however.

The video’s caption carried a tone of vague concern, potential shit-stirring, and in all its entirety, a whole lot of _something_ that made Izumi want to fling his phone against a wall. It went along the lines of _‘izumi’s really handing it to leo here! ahh, i wonder if this is what usually happens? hope leo’s doing okay lmao’,_ and Leo himself had laughed at the original post, saying that it’d take far more than a routine lecture from _Sena Izumi_ to do him in. The comments on the post, for the first fifteen minutes or so, had travelled along a vein of amusement at Izumi’s scolding- full of _‘haha’_ s and _‘rip leo u will be missed!!!!!!!’_ s and _‘god i wish that were me’_ s. (Ritsu had snorted at that last one, saying that their fans had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Izumi had swatted him over the head in response.)

Slowly yet surely, however, the comments on the post spiralled from playful jabs and increasingly horny remarks to the complete other side of the spectrum. It started out small, with a lone fan going _‘isn’t he being a bit too harsh, though?’_ and a handful of others catching on to the thought. Eventually, the _‘leo is so cute i want to hug him’_ s and _‘I’d like Izumi to list allllll the things I’ve done wrong today in that sort of tone and for him to [REDACTED]’_ s progressed into _‘why is he so pissed off’_ and _‘he’s fucking overdoing it lol’_ and _‘leo’s definitely gotta be hurt by that, look at him being all quiet and just nodding. the shit izumi’s saying is really getting to him’._

(If anything, Leo was only ever silent and nodding because he wasn’t actually _listening._ He’d probably been composing some new masterpiece in his head, deriving inspiration from Izumi’s lecture while letting the words wash over him like a tide, every syllable going in one ear and right out the other. Not that their fans would know _that.)_

Being short as it was, the video- and hence its millions of watchers- missed the way Leo had rolled his eyes and given Izumi a bright, blinding grin after the brief admonishing, the way Izumi rolled his eyes even harder back (he wasn’t one to be outdone) before proclaiming the matter as settled and ruffling at Leo’s hair thoroughly enough that Leo complained. It missed the tiny orange bastard jumping on Izumi seconds later, throwing his arms around him and clinging to him tightly in retribution, the laughter from everyone else as Izumi blushed and spluttered, the _good work today_ s shared between the five of them as they changed out of their costumes and prepared to leave the venue. It missed the good-natured teasing and the kiss Izumi had pressed to Leo’s cheek as they departed (well, thank god for that one), the sense of normalcy and lightheartedness of the entire affair.

 _He’s being horrible,_ the comments wrote. _How do the rest of Knights feel about this?_ Other, older videos began to surface, ones depicting Knights and their typical banter paired with impish affection- affection that Izumi always, in his usual blunt way, rejected to the best of his ability. The video’s were never clear enough to catch the red in his cheeks or the quirk of his lips, having been recorded by amateur fans standing metres away. _Is he always like this? He’s so ungrateful. They’re trying to love him, but he won’t accept it._ Within the span of a single hour, _Sena Izumi_ began to trend on countless social media platforms, everyone jumping on the same bandwagon. _He doesn’t know how to be anything but sour, huh,_ they said. _It’s like all of his smiles up on stage are fake. He shouldn’t be treating the others like this._

_Does he even know what love is?_

The fans probably hadn't started out in malice. Call him hypocritical, but if Izumi himself had caught someone _else_ speaking to Leo- or any of his unit- in a manner he found rude or overly brash, he'd react the same way, and step in immediately. To those not personally acquainted with Knights, fans or no, Izumi’s behaviour in those out-of-context videos might have seemed solely aggressive and uncalled for, scathing and to be taken to heart. To people who had only ever seen Izumi’s practiced smile and charming aloofness, this was a major culture shock, he was sure- so he understood their comments, their reasons for speaking against him.

That didn’t make any of this hurt any less, though.

He loved Knights. Loved them more than anyone else in the world. He’d do anything for them, pour out his heart and soul for them, drop everything and race halfway across the world if they called. He’d put his all into granting any wish of theirs he possibly could, because he knew better than anyone else how much they deserved to be loved, and for all their wants and needs to be fulfilled in the snap of a finger. He wanted to be the one to give that love, to give it _back,_ and he sure as hell was trying.

No matter how hard he tried, though, he just didn’t seem to be any good at it at all.

“Sena, pay attention to me! C’mon, look at me, _looooook_ at me, I’m way more interesting than the wall, you know-”

Without shifting his gaze from the wall opposite, Izumi reached out and gave Leo’s forehead a gentle flick. This was a perfect example of his inability to show love like a normal human being, he supposed. A proper boyfriend might have immediately tended to Leo, given him what he wanted, spoiled him the way he deserved.

Izumi was not a proper boyfriend. He continued his prolonged staring at the plain, white surface, fingers curling into and uncurling from the sheets beneath him periodically. He was sitting at the foot of his hotel room’s bed, socked feet tapping slow beats against the carpeted floor. His phone, which he’d been looking at before Leo barged in ten minutes earlier, lay discarded by his side. There was nothing more to see there, anyway. Every social media post said the exact same thing, carried the exact same message: Sena Izumi did not know how to love.

And that was wholly, indisputably correct. 

“Se- _na,”_ Leo groaned, flopping down on the bed next to Izumi, legs kicking up and down. He wrapped his arms around Izumi’s waist and squeezed him tightly, burying his face in the fabric of the shirt before him and making Izumi feel warmer than he’d ever felt. Izumi sighed, finally turning to look at Leo, who was currently nothing more than a head of unruly orange hair connected to a lump of soft hoodie and legs, legs, legs.

“What, Leo-kun,” Izumi said, and Leo’s head popped up immediately. There was a sunny grin on his face and his eyes damn near _sparkled_ beneath the polished lamps of the room, and he looked, for all intents and purposes, lovable.

Leo was someone easy to love, after all.

If there were any one person in the world who could be used as a training dummy or even an instructor for learning how to love, it would be Tsukinaga Leo. Leo was always filled with love to the point of overflowing, and he gave and accepted love like it was something as easy and trivial as breathing air in and out. Everything Izumi knew about love had come from this single entity, this _Leo,_ who had taught him how love was a give and take, had let him try it out for himself, using the latter as a test subject. (The results had been disastrous, catastrophic, but things were better now. Or so Izumi liked to think.) Leo’s life was a whirlwind of kindness and love and affection, and for that very reason...

“Hey,” Izumi said quietly, causing Leo, who’d just opened his mouth to speak, to fall silent. _See, you’re doing it again._ “Do you think…”

He trailed off, fingers curling in loose fists as he huffed a shaky sigh. Leo rolled over to rest his head on Izumi’s lap, legs hanging off the bed as he gazed up at the silver haired. “Do I think what?”

“We’re not-” Leo’s eyes were gorgeous, ethereal, _distracting._ ”We’re not that good of a match, are we?”

Leo blinked, those emerald orbs hiding themselves from view for a fraction of a second before revealing themselves again. “Are you breaking up with me, Sena?”

Izumi felt his eyes widen, breath catch in his throat. “I’m not!” _I should._ But he was selfish, too selfish for his and Leo’s own goods- always had been. “I’m just saying. Leo-kun, you’re...” _bright, shining, dazzling, brilliant._ “Different. Special. Someone like me can’t keep up, you know?” he let his clenched fist rise and fall against the covers in a pathetic _thump._ “It’s… you’d probably be better off with someone else. You should think about that. There are people who’d be more well-suited to you.”

“Well-suited, huh.” Leo gave a soft, contemplative hum, rubbing the hem of Izumi’s shirt between his fingers as he looked up at the ceiling. His eyes fell shut. “Who cares if they’re more suited to me?”

Izumi stared at him. _“You_ should."

“I don’t,” Leo replied, eyes still closed even as his lips moved to the sound of his voice. “Because I’m not suited to anyone but Sena. I’m suited to you, and I _think_ you’re suited to me, and we work well together, so why should I care about anyone else?”

“I mean-” what the _fuck_ was happening. “You’re always- so open with what you’re feeling and thinking. Like now, see?” Izumi waved a hand, trying not to let agitation seep into his words as his mind scrambled to work on autopilot and his mouth simply delivered. “I’m the opposite. You’ve gotten hurt because of that. All because I-”

The words stuck in his throat, thick and rubbery, threatening to choke him. _Because I don’t know how to love._

Leo frowned, and then his eyes were open again, promptly drowning Izumi in their familiar shade and intensity. “I can see what you’re thinking and feeling anyway, though?”

Silence befell the room, and for a few moments it was simply springs of blue looking into pools of green. Izumi wondered if their colours complemented each other. “...Not all the time, you can’t.”

“Not all the time, sure, but enough times for it to count!” Leo lifted a hand to twirl a lock of silver hair around his finger, a smile gracing his face. The expression was sweet, placid- as if he’d forgotten that it was Izumi’s inability to be honest with his feelings, his _love,_ and Leo’s inability to see through him, that had landed them in such a mess all those years ago, in their second year. “You might suck at saying it aloud, but everything you do usually means the same thing.” Leo’s hand left Izumi’s hair, and then words were being finger-drawn in the air, the movements of Leo’s wrist delicate yet carefree as its owner narrated what was being written. “I- love- you!”

Izumi’s cheeks flushed at the blatant assumption, and he swatted Leo’s hand away before he got stabbed in the eye. “That’s a lie.”

“Come _on,_ Sena.” Leo groaned, sitting up in a swift movement. Suddenly he was throwing his arms around Izumi, forcefully leaning all his weight on him in a way that made the latter tumble backwards onto the mattress. Izumi gave a rather undignified yelp in surprise, instinctively wrapping his arms around Leo’s body and holding him close- he didn’t want the composer to fall off the bed and crack his skull open, or something.

 _Idiot._ Izumi glared at his boyfriend from where he was now laying on his back, head an inch away from where it _could_ have landed on a pillow but didn’t, and supporting a wild Tsukinaga Leo in his arms. Leo grinned, triumph practically bleeding out of him as he shifted to prop himself up on his elbows, knuckles pressed to his cheeks and each arm on either side of Izumi. His body was warm and thrumming with energy against Izumi’s cooler, calmer (not really) one, and Leo hooked their ankles together as if to drive home the point that Izumi was _not_ getting up until Leo got off him first.

“See?” Izumi wanted to kiss that stupid, cocky smile off Leo’s face. Their lips were hardly a breath apart what with how close their bodies were, so it wouldn’t be much of a challenge. “You kept me safe. That tells me you love me, even if you don’t say it aloud. Easy, huh?”

“That was not _easy,”_ Izumi huffed, tightening his grip around Leo’s waist. “And I didn’t do anything of a sort.”

Leo raised his eyebrows, gesturing at Izumi’s arms around him. “What’s this, then?”

Izumi immediately let go, and Leo burst out in laughter. “Shut it _,”_ Izumi said, determinedly trying to ignore the way something sort of flipped around in his chest at the pleasant (yes, pleasant, call him crazy) sound, and the red that was surely rising in his cheeks. _“Leo-kun.”_

 _“Sena,”_ Leo replied, imitating his tone and emphasis. Izumi rolled his eyes- however he sounded, it definitely wasn’t like _that_. “You’re fine just the way you are, you know?”

Izumi stared at him with a sense of faint disbelief. This was it. As of today, genius composer Tsukinaga Leo had finally, _finally_ lost his marbles.

“It’s not that you can’t change if you want to, or need to,” Leo said, tracing a finger over both of Izumi’s eyebrows and making him wrinkle them in response. “Actually, it’s good that you _are_ changing. I get that you’re trying to be better. But you don’t have to rush it- we’re not going anywhere, you know? Not me, not Knights.” Leo frowned, and then it was Izumi’s turn to reach out and touch, smoothing the furrow from his brows. “What I’m trying to _say_ is that no matter how grumpy and un-straightforward you are, it’s okay. We all know you love us! It’d take an idiot not to see that.”

 _Did he just indirectly call me an idiot_. “That’s-”

“All that stuff you do,” Leo interrupted, seemingly intent on steamrolling on, “we get it. You nag and complain and lecture us _all the time,_ but you also make us food and give us advice and let us nap on you when we’re tired or sad.” A bright, cheeky grin was directed Izumi’s way, and Izumi instinctively turned his gaze to the wall, cheeks blazing. “So, it’s fine! It comes from the heart, or whatever, right? Our fans might not get that, but _we_ do. And that’s what counts, so stop worrying so much about what some stupid strangers think about you, and focus on us instead.”

That last sentence was spoken with a deliberate pout on Leo’s lips, beseeching eyes meaningfully fixed on Izumi’s the moment Izumi’s head jerked back to look at him. “You-”

 _You knew._ Leo knew, had known all along what Izumi was agonising over, and had intentionally bugged him enough to create an opening to say all of this, to soothe his fears. Why would he even…

“I love you, Sena,” Leo said simply, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Like the phrase didn’t make Izumi’s heartbeat double in speed no matter how many times he heard it from Leo’s lips, even though he’d heard it enough times that he should have acclimatised to it by now. “I love you, so I’ll see through you, and know what you’re trying to say, no matter what.” There was a brief pause as Izumi tried to reel in his frantically racing thoughts, and then Leo amended his statement. “Well, maybe not always. Sometimes you confuse me, too! But! Even then, you know what, Sena?”

 _Calm yourself._ Izumi took a deep, somewhat shaky breath, and exhaled. He lifted his gaze to meet the one looking expectantly at him, and thumbed gentle, barely-controlled circles over Leo’s hips as he steeled himself for whatever the latter was going to say. “What?”

Leo gave a wide, beaming smile, and Izumi’s heart melted at the sight of it. (There never really was any point putting up defences, when it came to Leo- he broke them all down without even having to try.) “I’ll love you, anyway! Whatever you say, whatever you do- I don’t care. I love you, so I’ll love you. That’s just how it is.” Leo wrapped his arms around Izumi and _squeezed,_ nuzzling his nose against his cheek before pressing a kiss there. “I love you, love you, loooooove you!”

Izumi felt a little like he’d just gotten the wind knocked out of him, both physically and mentally. “It’s- dangerous, to think that way,” he said between breaths of air, attempting to pry Leo off of him even as his instincts told him to hold him equally as tight, to hug him back. Because it _was_ dangerous for Leo to love him no matter what, no matter what idiotic bullshit Izumi spouted. It had led to both their downfalls, once upon a time. “You can’t just take whatever I do or say in stride and- you need to _stop_ me, Leo-kun, don’t be-”

“I know, I know,” Leo sang, pulling back and sitting up a little to poke Izumi in the cheek with an index finger. “I will. Stop you, I mean. I’ll complain and nag and lecture you just the way you’ve taught me.” He gave Izumi a roguish grin, a few strands of hair escaping his ponytail and framing his face a little more. “And while doing all that, I’ll love you. I can do both at once, you know- you’re talking to a genius here! Don’t forget!”

 _I never forgot. Even when you did._ “I guess,” Izumi muttered, reaching out and tucking a lock of orange behind Leo’s ear. “And, I guess-” _say it, say it._ “I- love you, too.”

There was a shout of laughter, and then Leo was smiling wider than Izumi had ever seen him, diving straight back into Izumi’s arms like Izumi hadn’t _just_ gotten him off him. _“Leo-kun,”_ Izumi yelped as cold fingers suddenly brushed against his sides, his back, shirt racking up to make room as arms tightly encircled him and Leo’s thumping heart pressed right to his. “Leo, your hands are _freezing-”_

“Yep!” However his hands had ended up _this fucking cold,_ Leo’s smile was like sunshine. “And yours are always warm!”

 _Warm, huh._ Izumi sighed, abandoning himself to his fate and opting to run his fingers through soft, untied hair instead. The actions served well to distract himself from the shivers that travelled up his body every so often- whether or not the shivers were a product of Leo’s cold hands alone, wasn’t something he was going to put proper thought into. Leo rambled on and on about how they both loved each other, so everything was fine and simple and okay, and Izumi kissed his head in a half-hearted attempt to shut him up. It didn’t work. _Love. If only it were that easy._

Still, Izumi supposed, as Leo peppered kisses all over his face in some newfangled manner of retaliation, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to play along with this idealism for just a while longer. This boundless optimism, this risky, faithful theory of love. Leo seemed to believe in it, and Izumi wasn’t one to burst his bubble so cruelly.

(And maybe, just maybe- if he stuck around with Leo long enough, if Leo _let him_ stick around long enough- maybe he’d grow to believe in it, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> as a form of damage control + free advertising, Knights posts videos of izumi being sappy and/or cute when he’s with them, showing fans that izumi is actually a soft, caring person when he wants to be. many of these videos were taken ~~illegally~~ in secret. many of these videos were taken by arashi and ritsu. izumi chooses violence and commits arson in response. ES goes up in flames. eichi cries


End file.
